While the spot I have been on for the last two days has been a great learning experience I'm thinking there could be better. There's life where I've been just not the participation from the redfish I was hoping for. There's other predator fish out there so every wake, chase, and explosion doesn't mean it's a redfish. I met a guy walking out yesterday who was on an adjoining flat and he had not tailing redfish, but tailing sheepshead. So I came up with the idea to take my show on the road.
Since it was September 1st, my new healthy life, I thought a bike ride would be a good way to start. I had brought our Cape May bikes down, ones we hardly ever used, thinking a bikes a bike. Now I haven't found my tools just yet so it was going to be how it was. Now I can tell you there's a difference between riding an undersized beach cruiser on the boardwalk and through the jurassic park setting I found myself in yesterday.
I set off on my trip which was at least 13 miles one way. Okay, I checked it on Google Earth when I got home, it was 2-1/2 miles. But with my hands full, my handlebars too low, and the earth muddy and wet in some places it felt way longer than that. What I was looking for was that flat, nice and easy mud, but not pluff mud muddy, gently sloping, with grass not too tall, near deeper water, and without a gator nest nearby. Truth is I don't even know when the gators do their thing anyway.
So as I pedaled I looked left and right and I felt like I could be in a scene from Land of the Lost, for the youngins', it was a TV show from the 70's, or as you're more familiar with, the movie Jurassic Park. If a T-Rex busted out of the woods and gave chase I wouldn't have been surprised. That's where the lead image came from.
That's my image above with Chat GpT adding the Sleestaks. If you know then you know.
So when I got to this new spot I didn't necessarily like what I saw. I saw more fiddlers but the grasses were higher and I didn't feel like sticking around waiting for the tide to fill in. I went back to where I had fished and had fly guys on both sides of me but off in the distance. Maybe this spot isn't so bad after all. As the tide dropped I made my way into a new area. It was there I encountered my first alligator while wading. I was in knee deep water and he was 100 feet away but swimming around. I kept note on where he was and just waited and watched and made some casts to the, at times, furious activity in front of me. I need to learn what is swimming beneath the surface here and what that alligator is trying to eat.
In the afternoon we headed to Savannah for a Facebook Marketplace pick up. While there we stopped downtown at Riverwalk. And while there we had to grab something to eat but it was the first day of my new life? And just as we sat down this guy had to run by and remind me today was go day.
We had seen him earlier when we were driving but couldn't get a shot off. He did in the city streets, down the stairs, and I finally I got him as he ran along the waterfront. That's a telephone pole he's got on his shoulder. But did he bike 5 miles today in a jungle on a small bike through wet grass?
Siri took us a different way, albeit shorter, back home from Savannah. I have to say I love where our home is located. I'm gonna go long on the actual times, but 30 minutes from Hilton Head, Beaufort, Ridgeland, where The ??? House is, and Savannah. We're dead in the middle. So running down to Savannah to get a taste of a big city is two right turns and a circle to get there.
So then it was the question of what to eat. I'd been good all day. How bad could one Michelob Ultra draft be? So we each had grabbed one and shared a healthy shrimp and grits, well I don't know how healthy the cheese was. At least that guy running with that pole didn't do a run by to make me feel guilty as I sat with a beer and a bite.
When we got back home I took Luke out for a walk. As I got him onto the grass across the street from the house I looked over and realized we were being watched.
It was the neighborhoods pet alligator sunning himself in the late day sun. That was two in one day that were in my zone. I hope that's not telling me something. As then as we walked a noisy pick up truck entered the neighborhood. It took me a bit to figure out what he was doing.
On the back was a fogger and our neighbors said they fog for mosquitoes from time to time. At least they turn it off when they approach people out in the street. It reminded me of those old photos of kids chasing the fogging trucks back in the 1940's and 50's.
The fog back then was DDT, or dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, which doesn't sound like something kids should have been breathing in. Looking it up it's labeled as a hormone disruptor which can increase cancer risks, reproductive problems, and multigenerational health effects. It was all about banned in 1972.
So other than the pollen, the bugs, the gators, and the heat and the humidity, this place is great. I went outside between writing this and I can tell today is going to be murderous heat wise. It's 0830 and it feels like it's already in the 90's, and hot. Last night I asked if and when fall arrives down here in the south. The bartender just laughed. He said it happens in September and lasts about two weeks. I guess I won't be seeing pumpkin spice everythings and pumpkins any time soon. But at least I won't have to worry about the raking the leaves, cutting and splitting firewood,
and thatching, aerating, and reseeding the lawn this fall. I used to enjoy the sound and smell of gasoline engines. Those sounds came from my log splitter, chainsaw, trimmer, and blower, but now I'll just enjoy watching others handling all things landscaping, and stay away from whatever's blowing out of the back of that pick-up.